House Votes to Reduce ‘Star Wars’ Request, Retain B-2 : Defense: The $288-billion plan is unclear on how many Stealth bombers may be purchased. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The House approved a defense bill Wednesday night that slashes President Bush’s budget request for “Star Wars” and barely keeps alive the B-2 Stealth bomber program.

By a vote of 271 to 156, the House adopted the bill despite Republican doubts that it meets the Pentagon’s needs for the post-Cold War era and Democrats’ concerns about building costly weapons to counter a lessening Soviet threat.

The legislation sets spending ceilings for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 totaling $288 billion, or $19 billion less than Bush sought in his original proposal in January.

The total is $5.5 billion more than the House approved in September. The legislation goes on to the Senate, which is expected to pass it. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has said he supports the legislation and presidential approval is likely.

Funding must be provided in separate appropriations.

Among the major provisions is scaled-down continuation of the B-2 bomber, the radar-evading aircraft estimated to cost nearly $865 million a plane and designed to locate targets in the Soviet Union after a nuclear attack.

The legislation also calls for $2.9 billion for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” $1.8 billion less than Bush sought for SDI and $700 million less than Congress approved last year.

The military blueprint is the product of weeks of negotiations between the House and Senate, which approved vastly different bills.

The original House legislation stopped production of the B-2 bomber while the Senate adopted the Administration’s request for money to buy planes No. 16 and No. 17.

The compromise provides $4.1 billion for the program, but is ambiguous on how many bombers the Air Force can purchase. Senate proponents contend that the service can spend the money as it sees fit; House opponents believe cost overruns on the first 15 planes will consume most of the money.

The confusion and contradictions over the B-2 erupted on the House floor late Wednesday as Republicans contended that the Pentagon can buy two new, radar-evading bombers and Democrats argued it cannot.

“The joke is on the Democrats. Mr. Cheney told me he got the money and he’s going to build them. Somebody is being lied to,” said Rep. William L. (Bill) Dickinson of Alabama, ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

But Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Service panel, threatened that if the Air Force tries to buy two new planes, “we will cut off all B-2 money.”

The bill reduces U.S. troop levels, now about 2.1 million, by 100,000, but, bowing to pressure from the Pentagon, gives the defense secretary added authority to limit the troop cut to 80,000 if he believes the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf warrants such a step.

It significantly scales back spending on land-based, nuclear missiles and continues the V-22 Osprey, the tilt-rotor aircraft the Pentagon has tried to cancel in the last two years as unneeded.

Final passage did not come without angry complaints from House Republicans who chastised Aspin for excluding GOP members from negotiations with the Senate.

Dickinson was not included in a late-night session in which Aspin and the ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee reached final agreements on the bill.

“Never before has any committee gone into conference and the ranking member been excluded from the windup session,” Dickinson said. “This is the sleaziest conduct and treatment of any ranking member I’ve heard of.”

Democratic Rep. Marvin Leath of Texas came to Aspin’s defense, saying “I don’t think our chairman intended for this to happen.”